


you love me like a soldier (so I love you like a time bomb)

by Aeolian



Series: all the people you belong to (their hands upon your heart) [1]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Domestic Violence, F/M, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2761157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeolian/pseuds/Aeolian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edith Barton, through the ages.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you love me like a soldier (so I love you like a time bomb)

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:**  
>  Not a happy ending (or beginning, or middle). Warnings for canon deaths, deaths of OCs, the graphic aftermath of death by asphyxiation, premature birth by miscarriage (non-graphic), canonical domestic abuse both physical and emotional, and period-typical misogyny and misandry. 
> 
> You don't need to read [you never know what you might harbor (underneath all that armor)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2822153) to understand this fic
> 
> For anyone unfamiliar with Hawkeye's history, Harold and Edith are Clint Barton's parents, who both died in a car crash when Clint and his brother Barney were young, which led to the Barton brothers being sent to an orphanage, which they ran away from to join a circus, the first chapter in the Barton Handbook to Decision-Making, which led, eventually, to one becoming an Avenger, and the other becoming his sometimes friend, sometimes nemesis. This fic was my attempt at reconciling 1) why Clint and Barney were put into the orphanage in the first place when they have at least one aunt, 2) why Fraction & Aja moved the family out of their butcher shop into a random farmhouse, and, related, what the deal is with Hawkeye's farm in MCU and 3) y u no defend self, Edith Barton?!

4.

She pulls calf tails and chases Lassie the dog, hides behind Ma's skirts when her pa storms into the farmhouse, snorting like a bull. They cower under the rum-soaked storm of his rage, and Ma sends her to sit quietly in the corner with Pearl, who's such a baby, so she sneaks out the back door to find Frankie instead.

Frankie's skipping pebbles, tall and blond and brave, practically an adult at the grand old age of ten, framed by the willow trees around the pond at the edge of their lot, where the cows come to drink and, during the summers, escape the muggy heat. She copies him, but her own pebbles just sink into the cloudy waters.

"Look, it's all in the wrist," says Frankie, "Watch this."

He shows her how to lob the stone underhand a few times before he throws, and the pebble daps like a dragonfly across the water, once, twice, three times, four.

"Now, you try," says Frankie, handing her a flat, smooth pebble.

She scrunches up her face and flings the pebble at the water. _Plunk_.

"That's all right, Dee-Dee," says Frankie, tugging her braid before she can cry, "Hey, I just thought of another game we can play."

 

10.

She's skinned her knees on all the trees of the Hart Farm, beaten the Sumner boys and the Meyer clan at cowboys and Indians, and terrorized every songbird in a five-mile radius around Shell Rock with her trusty slingshot. Everyone knows Crazy Edie, and her ma complains she can't look the other wives in the eye when they go into town for nutmeg and bailing twine, nails and nail polish, the last item because Ma still holds out hope that Edie will turn into a lady, set a good example for Pearl, who's nine, Ruth Ann, six and Dennis, two.

"Why do I need to be a role model for Dennis?" says Edie, "Isn't that Frank's job?"

Frank, a senior in high school, pretends he's too cool for little siblings, but she's seen him play at make believe with Ruth Ann, and show Pearl all their favorite bird-watching spots. And when Edie came home crying after Joe and Bruce tried to corner her behind Shell Rock Elementary School, Frank excused himself and didn't come home until after dark, well after supper, his knuckles bleeding. The Sumner boys left her alone after that.

"Frank won't be home anymore come June," says Ma, picking up a copy of Vogue magazine to study, "You should play with more girls. What about the Jennings girl--isn't she your age?"

"Okay, Ma," says Edie, even though Mary Jennings only likes to play tea and dress up.

 

14.

Edie hides her milk-strong sun-hardened arms under bright sweaters knitted like Audrey Hepburn's, cuts her hair like Sandra Dee's, practices smiling like Elizabeth Taylor in the mirror, until she turns heads wherever she goes.

The boys she kisses are all tall and blond and brave, and while she might not be sure of them, she's sure of the feelings they arouse deep in her belly, like movies, or burning rubber down US-63 at night, or the exotic places Pa fought in during the war he never talks about but Ma does. The boys promise her they'll be team captain and prom king, they'll take her to Paris and London and New York.

She meets Hal, who's different from the others, despite his promises of team captain and prom king, New York and London and Paris. That year, Pa has one too many beers before hooking up the milk machines, and Bessie's Pavlovian kick catches him in the temple. Nothing anyone could do.

During the funeral, Edie floats in a tank of numbness, separated from the flat, bright world by a thick pane of grief, anchored only by her hand in Hal's, tall and chestnut and brave.

 

18.

Everyone knows Edie Hart, bombshell, prom queen, sweetheart of the basketball captain, Lady and Lord of a fiefdom of five hundred. It's all fawning juniors and clucking mothers, and the only time Edie feels like herself is during cheer practice, vaulting through the air atop pyramids in Swedish falls and dead man drops, free and alone with her own pounding heartbeat.

Frank, dependable and earthbound, climbing as sure-footed as a goat up the Carnation plant hierarchy, has already started asking about her plans after high school. Recruiters from all over the country have been swarming around Hal all semester, but he's put off deciding until after the championship. Edie will go wherever he goes, of course, but she hopes he will choose Boston, or New York or LA.

"Well, keep your options open, Dee-Dee," says Frank, "I've got a job opening if you change your mind."

"Thanks, Frank," says Edie, giving him a quick hug, "Tell Nancy I said hi."

Frank grins with boyish delight. Nancy Cooper had been cheer captain when Edie had been a freshman, practically an older sister, and is now secretary to the plant manager. They're walking down the aisle in August, and Edie can't imagine a better wife for Frank.

The gym is packed by the time she arrives, and she squeezes between Mary Jennings and Nancy's cousin Barbie. Barbie's boyfriend Don is also on the team, and Mary's here to keep her company. They chat about boys and movies and articles in the latest issue of Elle magazine, and when Edie looks up, it's the fourth quarter, and the Hawks are down two points with 43 seconds to go and Hal, glistening and determined and tough, charges straight at the Panther's point guard, who's not giving an inch.

They're well outside the three-point line, but she's seen Hal make easy shots from half court. Number 4 doesn't seem to know this, crouched low with long arms blocking his way forward. Hal fakes a backward pass, dodges Number 4's attempted block and makes a showy jump shot.

But Number 4's forward momentum causes him to pitch right onto Hal. They crash to the ground, Hal on one foot, bearing Number 4's and his own weight in an awkward angle. There's a snap.

Edie's out of her seat and pounding down the bleachers before she's even aware she's moving. Someone yanks her arm, dragging her to the team bench, before she can reach Hal, who's howling and writhing on the ground, players and coaches pulling Number 4 off of him. It's some time before the school nurse binds his leg with Ace bandages, and Don and Jack help Hal hop outside to someone's car.

"Take deep breaths," says Coach Kearney, hand still gripping her forearm, as if afraid Edie will float away, "He'll be fine."

They let her visit the hospital two days later. The doctors won't tell her anything, but Mrs. Merritt, Hal's foster ma, tells her that Hal had a number of surgeries to fix his Achilles tendon. He may never run again.

"At least we won, though," says Hal, still woozy from the anesthesia. Edie can't stop a sudden burst of angry tears from flooding her eyes.

"Whoa, whoa," says Hal, panicking, "Hey there, Edie-girl, I meant to ask a question."

"Okay," says Edie, dabbing carefully at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"I-um, I can't promise you Milan or Paris or, heck, even New York no more," says Hal, shifting nervously, "But the life you deserve? I can definitely do that. Okay, so--"

"Yes."

"Dammit, let me ask the question first."

"Lay it on me then, Mr. Barton," says Edie, grinning, her anger dried alongside her tears.

"Edith Colerick Hart, will you marry me?"

 

19.

Edie persuaded Frank to give Hal the job he promised her, and so every morning Frank limps, from their rented apartment in town, up the hill, to the Carnation plant, to stick labels on sweetened condensed milk cans all day, while she puts all her Good Housekeeping tips to good use, between feeding and changing little Charles Bernard Barton, called after Hal's father and foster father. She's dusting the bookshelf, baby finally asleep, when the front door bangs open. It's only Hal, home early, storming past her straight to the cabinet under the sink.

"How was your day, dear?" says Edie, cautiously. These days, Hal's moods change like the weather, turning sunny or stormy faster than the wind.

"Your goddamn brother fired me," he says, curt, taking a hearty swig of her cooking sherry.

She lets her dusting take her behind the kitchen table before she says, "We could go talk to him. I'm sure Frank will listen to reason."

The baby, grizzling since Hal banged through the door, starts bawling. Edie quickly scoops him up and rocks him, shushing him softly, while Hal takes another long swallow.

"I need to blow off some steam," says Hal in a low voice, once the baby is settled again, "C'mon, let's go for a drive."

Cedar Valley is beautiful this time of year, wildflowers blazing across the landscape, the creeks sweetened by spring rains, miles of cornfields just barely shin high, broken only by the sprawling soybeans of the Gifford farm. Hal's shoulders slowly unbunch as he drives.

"Bruce Sumner and the boys were laughing at a man working the labeling station," says Hal finally, "And I just--I couldn't take--"

She could easily see what came next, a proud man brought low, his dreams of playing ball and traveling the country dashed with a single accident, stagnating at the women's table, while his peers moved up through the canning stations: a few harsh words, a punch thrown in anger, and then the entire factory thrown into disarray as tensions built up over years explode like an A-bomb. She wonders how far the mushroom cloud will billow, how bitter the nuclear fallout.

He exhales sharply, and the air fills with the smell of wine and defeat.

"Bruce Sumner and the boys are idiots," says Edie, "And besides, that job wasn't good enough for you."

Two weeks later, Edie runs into Mary Jennings, now Mrs. Mary Meyers, whose father-in-law runs the Waverly butcher shop. Mary looks like one of her own childhood dolls, in a candy-colored dress, meticulously sprayed bob, matching heels and Mary Quant purse, flaunting the label as she constantly readjusts the straps. Edie tucks her own hand-stitched tote closer to her body.

"Oh, of course he can give Hal a job," says Mary, "I'll put in a good word for him."

"Thanks so much, Mary," says Edie, with genuine relief.

Rushing home, she follows a trail of necktie, hat, suit jacket, linen shirt, from the door until she finds Hal, in his undershirt, home from job-hunting, rooting in the cabinet under the sink again. She has yet to replace the cooking sherry.

"Yeah?" he says, when she tells him the news, bad mood forgotten, "Just you wait, I'm going to own the place in five years, and then you can have everything your pretty little heart wants."

 

23.

Charlie pulls pigtails and chases the neighborhood dog Scruffy, hides behind Edie's skirt when Hal limps home to drink away the ache in his shoulders from cleaving beef shoulders, the tension in his ankle from standing all day. The repaired tendon won't stretch all the way, causing his foot to drag with every step. Hal has to buy twice as many right shoes as the left, the soles worn down at the toe, the limp worse when he drinks, whenever he hurts.

Charlie, four years old and already familiar with Daddy's moods, eats his dinner in silence, careful not to let any of his silverware clank.

"Mr. Meyers is selling the place. Said none of his brothers want it," says Hal, "I've already told him I'm going to buy it."

Edie, running tallies in her head, says without thinking, "Do we have the money?"

"You the head of the household now?" says Hal, "I'll worry about it."

She keeps her eye on her plate, nervously rubs her swollen stomach, the baby kicking in sympathy.

She invites Mary over for tea the next day, gossiping about the Giffords' soybean crusade, the new Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, the new management at the Carnation plant, before saying, as casually as she can, "Oh, that reminds me. Hal mentioned the sale of the butcher shop. Can you run the numbers by me again? You know how men are with money."

"Oh, yes, Richie says he told Hal they were selling for $10,000," says Mary, Edie's best teacup balanced daintily in three fingers, "Did you need the bank account too?"

"Of course. Let me run into the kitchen for a pen," says Edie, and as soon as the door swings shut, clutches the counter and gasps in panicked, choking breaths.

She rechecks the income and expenses she carefully tallies in a notebook. The price is exponentially more than what they have in the bank. She'd like to go downtown and check directly with a bank teller (maybe Hal deposited a check and hasn't told her?), but Barbie works there, and if Barbie knows she went to the bank tomorrow, then all of Waverly will know. In the best case scenario, the Meyers will simply wonder why Edie went to the bank and didn't make a wire transfer; in the worst case scenario, Barbie will tell her best friend Mary that the Bartons aren't good for the money, and the Meyers will sell to someone else. In between lay a whole minefield of rumor-driven price renegotiations and counteroffers from other townsfolk, driving up a price they can't afford as it is.

Edie does what she always does when faced with a problem, and goes home.

Ma is sitting in the rocking chair in the parlor when she arrives, knitting needles resting atop her lap, Lassie's grandson Midnight asleep at her feet, snores ruffling the grey hairs around his snout, both soaking in the last of winter's short light. Ma wraps her in a hug without a word, then herds her towards the kitchen. Edie follows without resistance, and it's like she's twelve again, pouring out her troubles with Mary and Barbie to Ma over milk and cookies, an old dog waiting for a scratch behind the ear with its head in Edie's lap.

Ma listens, patient as the land itself, until Edie talks herself out.

"We'll sell the cows," says Ma, "The land should go for a good price too."

"But, _Ma,_ " says Edie, shocked.

"I'm getting old," says Ma with a great sigh, "And none of you children want to run the farm, I'm sure."

"But Ruth Ann and Dennis are still living at home," frets Edie, "And we've only got the one spare room."

There's a twinkle to Ma's eye when she says, "I'm sure Frank has room too. And who knows? After vultures finish picking over the land, maybe we'll keep the farmhouse."

They agree to put together information for lenders and CWT to begin the selling process. The cat will be out of the bag once they send it out, but Edie reckons Mary will take their willingness to sell a fourth-generation farm as a positive sign. She'll simply tell Hal she's staying home the last weeks of her birth--he'd feel obligated to help with the sale, and she couldn't burden him with any more responsibilities.

On her third day home, Frank appears in the front door, ashen-faced. Edie wipes her graphite- and ink-stained hands on her dress and flings her arms around her big brother. He squeezes her in a bear hug around her shoulders, the rest of him carefully tilted away from her nine-month belly. There's a tell-tale wetness soaking into her collar, but Hart men are tall and strong and brave, so she simply rocks with him, back and forth, and back and forth, until he lets out a sigh from the pit of his soul, takes a step back and nods at her. Charlie, normally a rambunctious child around his favorite uncle, clutches at her skirts, and nods solemnly and silently back.

Later, Edie washes dishes while Frank stares out their kitchen window at the snowman Charlie and the neighbor's kid Phil built.

He says, "Nancy left with the kids, no note or nothing."

The snowman has no reply.

Two mornings later, Edie knocks on the door to the spare room when Frank doesn't show up for breakfast, and, not finding him there, goes searching through the house and the barn until she comes across two legs sticking out from Buttercup's pen. She opens the hatch, and it's Frank blue face and Frank's bloodshot eyes and Frank's bruised, crushed throat and--

She screams loud enough to bring down the house, never mind the barn, her heart rending in two all the way down to her core, and Ma finds her trying to crawl backwards out of the pen away from the horror, the horror, sobbing her heart out, and _your water broke,_ and _what are you still doing sitting here,_ and _Dee-Dee, baby please, we need to go, **now**_.

Alone in the delivery room, Edie stares at the birth certificate and social security forms. They had agreed on Clinton for the second child's first name, after Edie's father, but Hal wants his middle name to be Joseph, after Hal's barely-remembered grandfather. Edie pens, on both forms, in neat block letters, "CLINTON FRANCIS BARTON". Let Hal make of that what he will.

Hal doesn't make a fuss over the baby's name at the funeral, just holds Clint in the crook of one arm, and Edie's hand in his free hand, keeping the world from spinning. The pastor drones on and one about Francis Colerick Hart's service to the community and his devotion to family and his love for fellow mankind, but nothing about-- _why, why, why_ \--the one thing that mattered. It had been an accident, whisper the housewives around her. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Nothing anyone could do.

 

25.

Her home would be the envy of any Good Housekeeping reader, with a washer and dryer, sheet linoleum floors and Formica counters, and a roast always ready in the oven. Everyone knows the Bartons, and Edie's ma holds her head up high at the grocer's, doling out smiles and nods like benedictions. The first few nights after Fred Schumacher and his boys had wheeled in the new countertops and rolls of flooring, staring openly at the icebox, dishwasher, blender, TV, all space-aged chrome and barely out of the box, Edie had laid awake, stiff with survivor's guilt. The sale of the Hart Farm just barely covered the cost of the new store, and Edie snuck a check for what little was left into Dennis's pocket, with a note promising to pay Ma the full amount back someday. Instead, it was Frank, solid and dependable even in the next life, whose life insurance payout, after his death was ruled an accident, allowed Ma and the kids keep the farmhouse, at least until Dennis turns eighteen.

"It's free advertising for us," Hal whispered, in the middle of their endless bed, his voice the only tangible thing in the vast sea of formless worries and unarticulated fears in the dark, same as he used to assure her, in his souped-up Model T, under the stars, about New York and Paris and London, "Folks are gonna think, if they can afford to buy all those appliances, business must be good, and if business is good, then the product can't be bad, right?"

And the customers, who had shied from the store, having bought their meat from Meyers for generations, wary of the new sign and owner, started trickling in, curiously, hearing from Fred and his boys about the new Barton Butcher Shop, clean and bright and cherry new.

Charlie, who now insists on being called Barney ("Mo-o-o-om, there are four Charles in my grade _alone_."), thunders up the stairs, the sound of Hal's shop downstairs, full of buying customers, briefly drifts into the room, before the door swings shut. Clint totters eagerly, if inexpertly, towards his hero.

"Hey, buddy," says Charlie, giving his little brother a hug, "Mom! Guess what Aunt Pearl taught me?"

He sets up two empty whiskey bottles, which have been multiplying on her sideboard like votive candles on All Saints Sunday, and pulls out of his pocket a nickel, probably wheedled out of Pearl after he spent all of his weekly allowance. He gives a showman's flourish for their benefit, then, with a flick of the wrist, shoots the coin wobblingly at the bottles, pushing one back a few inches. Clint laughs and claps his hands in glee.

"It was so much hipper when Aunt Pearl did it," said Charlie, tilting his head, a moue of frustration on his face, "Mom, show me that finger-snap thing, please?"

It was one of the first things Frank taught her, pennies being easier on fumbling four-year-old fingers than river pebbles. It had gradually developed into a game, with a series of bottles, cans and old gears from the Pontiac Chieftain Pa had never gotten around to fixing up, and a long and detailed point system to thwart Pearl, the cheater. Edie could remember rushing through chores so Frank and Pearl and she--and later when Frank declared himself too old for games, Pearl and she--could spend entire afternoon playing Bottle Shoot, showering the entire front yard with brown glass and tinned steel shards. Edie still has a scar across the palm of her hand from the ricochet from a _spectacular_ fifty-seven-point shot, shattering two beer bottles and a tin can, bouncing 90 degrees through the induction ring of an ignition coil, hitting a bulls-eye onto an oak tree, with a single nickel. No one has yet to beat her record.

"Take it outside next time, and go wash your hands," says Edie, setting out a plate of apple slices and peanut butter.

"But Aunt Pearl said you taught her how to do it," says Charlie, pouting, but walking obediently towards the kitchen sink all the same.

"It was a long time ago," says Edie, wiping the linoleum floor for any scuff marks, "I don't remember anymore."

 

27.

She hides her bone-deep nail-gnawing fear in a new Neiman Marcus patent leather handbag like a ghillie suit, scatters smiles like smoke grenades, covers the mirrors with Life Magazine cutouts, until she is all but hidden under her armor.

Saigon falls, ending the war abroad, but the domestic one has just begun, with unknown saboteurs in the Barton home. There is always cash missing from the till, expenses that were never written down. They've quietly sold off most of the appliances, their books and their davenport to make ends meet--everything that couldn't be seen outside their four brick walls. It seems that, for all that they make, they see less and less income each month.

And still the rumors stick like napalm, caustic and viscid. Ever since his explosive exit from the Carnation plant, which grows wilder in Waverly's collective memory with every retelling, Hal had been labeled antagonistic, insubordinate, ungrateful. But the rumor mill shifts like the course of the river, and lately, one rumor has been gaining traction. _Diane always hiked her skirts short that year Hal was working at the plant_ and _Charlie and Susie broke up that year, didn't you know?_ and _Joyce and Hal were always disappearing together in the middle of their shift. Steve was born the next spring. Yeah, looks nothing like Joe._

Edie has never been one to believe the gossip, and she's pretty sure at least some of the rumors were spread by Bruce Sumner himself in vindictive glee, but with nothing to do all day, the doubt creeps in like frost. She waits, washing clothes in the bathtub, Barney scribbling his newest comic book in lieu of watching Saturday morning cartoons, on his stomach in the hallway, barely in her line of sight, Clint watching intently from the parental bedroom, where he had been banished after breathing too loudly in Barney's ear, until Hal leaves for his increasingly frequent all-day "meetings". Five minutes after the store's front door jingles shut, she calls for the boys, vindictively counts out a handful of bills from the till, and treats the boys to an afternoon of movies.

They watch King Kong, Freaky Friday and Bugsy Malone, Clint's chin sticky with cotton candy, Barney hogging all the popcorn, and Edie's mind blissfully, blissfully free from the constant whirl of fear and jealousy--was it true? Did Hal really abandon the mother of his children, the woman who had given him so much, who had sacrificed--

A cool, sticky hand lands gently on her cheek.

"Mom?" says Clint, in a tone of voice suggesting he'd been calling for her for a while now. She smiles shakily at him and realizes, oh, her cheeks are wet. She takes out a handkerchief and cleans her cheek and his hands, and Barney's popcorn-dusted hands, for good measure.

"Let's watch one more, before we go home, okay?" she says, and the boys run off with whoops of _yeah, I want Goobers_ and _do you think they have cowboy movies?_

The oldest of the next batch of Sumners gives Edie a double-take when she hands over three tickets for The Enforcer, but she's sure he's seen stranger things, and smiles blandly. The movie might be terrible for impressionable and developing young minds, but the rooftop chases and explosions drown out the drumbeat of her mind long enough for her to walk the children home in a cloud of serenity, smiling over their animated game of detectives and spies.

Hal is sitting on the front steps, waiting for them to come home, and Edie's good mood instantly vanishes. She slips past him and up the steps, but his voice is already rising into a roar behind her, the sharp tang of cheap whiskey intensifying with every step.

"Get down here! I'm talking to you."

"Dear, not where the neighbors can see, please."

Hal stumbles a little on the stairs, his heel uncooperative sometimes under anger, no leverage to turn his foot. He hollers at her from the third step.

"The _neighbors_ \--I come home from work and there's no note or nothing, and no one can tell me where you've been."

"The same place you've been all day, _at a meeting_!"

Hal seems taken aback at her sudden outburst. "That don't even make sense. Settle down, woman."

But Edie can't settle down. The floodgate behind her tongue has finally been sluiced after a year, and now the words are overfilling the spillway. "Who is she? I want to know--"

"Are you crazy? She, who?" he snarls, having to high-step for his foot to clear each step, slowing his menacing ingress considerably, but she stumbles backwards nonetheless.

" _The other woman_. What do you keep her in, champagne and--"

"It's _you_ I've been keeping i-in style. Why do you think I've been having to meet these--"

Edie glances to her left as Hal swallows back whatever he was going to say, and sees smashed bottles littering the kitchen floor, glass shards gouging her linoleum, dried whiskey staining the floorboard underneath, all her years of buffing and refinishing undone in a single temper tantrum. Edie glares down at Hal, blinking back her furious tears.

"Meet who?"

"Forget it," says Hal, a vein pulsing in his clenched jaw.

"I want to know. Meet who?"

There's a stifled sob from the bedroom, where Charlie must have hid his brother and himself while Edie and Hal screamed like idiots. Edie sees the open windows, the thin walls and Hal says, "Let's go take a drive."

Cows dot the landscape like petals floating in a glass-green lake, the Dodge Dart slicing like a cigarette boat through the humid, molasses-thick summer sunshine, rays caught in the sunflower's gaze, sinking into the maple's sugar-sweet sap, pooling in chrome-reflective ponds in the concave dips of the bleaching blacktop roads. Cicadas sing their love sonnets, and Edie strains to hear the lyrics.

"I took out loans to pay for the store," said Hal, "And I've been paying them back, in installments. But the interest--"

He peters off, waving his hand to encompass the futility of his actions, a hamster on its wheel.

"But you didn't need to," says Edie, "My mother's farm--"

"Yeah, do you think the loan sharks care?" snaps Hal, "The moment I took out that money, it started accruing interest. I could hand it all back to them, in cash, the very next day and I'd still be paying them off in installment."

"Why didn't you tell me? I could--"

"Why didn't _you_ tell _me_? Do you think we'd be in this mess if--?"

"I'm just _saying_ , Hal, we're in this together. We should--"

"Look, woman, you don't get to tell me how I run this marriage--"

"How _you_ run it? What about--"

Hal slams on the brakes, and the Dart nearly capsizes into the Gifford's field of soybeans. Edie screams and throws her hands over her head. There's a beat of silence, broken only by the roar of Edie's heart pounding like the winds before a tornado.

"Are you done yet?" says Hal, voice shaky. Edie nods, trembling too hard to speak.

"So here's what we're going to do," says Hal, slightly more sober, "We're still eight thousand dollars short--"

Edie muffles her sudden gasp of shock with her hand at Hal's glare.

"--and your mom still has that nest egg she's sitting on--"

"You can't! That's Dennis's college--"

The left side of Edie's face explodes into pain, so bright and sharp it whites out her vision. When it clears, she sees Hal shaking out his fist, eyes wild with rage and terror, monsters emerging from the back of his eyes, where they had been lurking for the past four years (for the past nine years), Edie feeling as if she's meeting Harold for the very first time, so different from the shining-eyed boy she once knew. She tries to feel the damage in her jaw, but the slightest touch causes her vision to fracture into white stars, a coppery taste flooding her mouth.

"Are you _finally_ done?" snarls Harold. Edie can't speak, can't move her jaw, and tears of shock and rage dash her hot cheeks, "'Cause I'm telling you what. They don’t get that money from me, they're going to come after you and your folks, and trust me, when it comes down to it, you're gonna wish it was me you were dealing with."

They drive back in complete, absolute silence.

 

28.

Everyone knows Edith Barton, mouse, social recluse, forever hidden behind scarves and dark glasses, fallen from her high pedestal. It's all fake sympathy and simpering housewives, and the only time Edie feels like herself is when it's just the boys and her, alone in the empty shell of her family home, the foreclosed store just waiting for a buyer, the deed now in the hands of someone else.

Days before they cut the phone lines, Edie had made frantic calls, to Pearl and Ma and Ruth Ann and Dennis.

"You have to get out of there," whispered Edie, afraid someone--Harold, the kids, the operator on the line--might overhear, "He's going to come after you for money. He won't stop. You have to promise me."

Ruth Ann's husband was accepting a job offer in Wisconsin anyway, and Ma agreed to move in with her, temporarily at least. Dennis accepted Cornell over a full-ride scholarship at the University of Iowa and promised to move to New York a few months early. Pearl's husband Gary had been itching to escape his father's thumb, and jumped at the chance to start his own business--Fred Schumacher was not an easy man to work for.

Harold had exploded in rage after he realized he had no more Harts to pump for cash and then, embarrassed by the infamy back home, started searching for jobs in Cedar Falls and Waterloo, giving the rest of the family days of paradise, enough time for Edie's bruises to fade, and Barney and Clint to relax from wax figurines into little boys again.

It gnaws at Edie that they're squatting in her mother's farm after driving everyone else away, their only company memories and ghosts, but no one will rent to them--it's not like everyone in town doesn't know their money problems. Edie takes a piecework job from a friend of Barbie's sister, against Harold's stringent protests, taking home a stack of fabric and batting to sew into Bucky Bears, her own children playing with whiskey bottles and rust-bucket cars in the yard, by the willow trees near the pond at the edge of the lot.

The Dodge Dart had long-since been repossessed--not that Edie can show her face around town--so any entertainment they want, they have to make themselves.

"What kind of bird is this?" says Edie, flipping to a random page in the bird-watching book, between sewing shoulder patches. Barney had found the book, originally Frank's and passed on to four younger siblings, in the dusty attic, tucked between Ma's hope chest and Ruth Ann's home economics project. The boys pored over the thick twine-bound book, spine broken and repaired three times, both of them fascinated by the detailed linocut prints, lovingly hand-colored, with Frank's careful annotations penciled into the margins, Pearl's flippant remarks in ink.

"A hawk!" shouts Clint.

"Hawks have longer tails," says Barney, "Look at the wing shape. It's a kite."

"Yes, that's right," says Edie, "Now, what _kind_ of kite is it?"

The screen door bangs open, and it's Harold, a black silhouette in the door, a bottle in each hand, and all three of them flinch. Barney shrinks into himself, and Clint blanches so white his nearly-healed black eye stands out lurid and green.

"How did the interview go?" she asks, squinting. The hours of sewing tiny stitches have not been kind to her eyes, and she can't focus on his face from here, can't read his mood.

His words blur like they've been inked on kraft paper soaked in half a bottle of whiskey, "I got the job. Eight hundred a month, plus ten percent commission."

"That's great, dear," says Edie, keeping her tone enthusiastic, "Are we celebrating?"

"We're going into town. Wear your good dress." He heads into the kitchen to stow his new bottles, and she sees the cheerful slant of his shoulders.

She nods and shoos the boys toward their room, heading upstairs to change into a sheath dress and pat her hair into place. She still has the purple Neiman Marcus purse, and she matches it with kitten heels and scarf. Eight hundred plus another few hundred in commission will mostly cover their groceries and bills, and maybe some of their car payments, but if they want to move out of the farmhouse and closer to the kids' schools, she'll need to keep the job, maybe ask Ruby for more work. She's coming down the stairs when she smells burning wool.

Harold is crouched by the fireplace, blazing a merry orange, and stuffs a fistful of blue felt into the fire even as she watches. She cries out and yanks his next handful of cloth out of his hands. "What are you doing?"

Harold looks hurt and surprised.

"I got the job," he repeats, slowly, "You don't need to ruin your fingers and your eyesight working anymore. I can take care of you."

"That's not the point," says Edie, struggling to articulate the degree of freedom the job gives her, the safety net that comes with the wages, "You can't just take it away from me."

"I don't get it. I give you the house and kids you want. I buy you everything you ask for. You don't have to worry about food or comfort or clothes anymore. What more do you want from me?"

There's a beat of silence, as Edie tries to shape her needs into words.

"Look, I get that you take pride from a job well done," says Harold, "Nothing wrong with that. We'll find something respectable for you do to. Something that lets you hold your head up high in town."

The boys hesitate on the steps, in their Sunday suits.

"C'mon, I made us reservations."

"Okay," she whispers, even though they both know she doesn't have any other options.

 

29.

The court ordered psychiatric counseling, and so every week Frank drives the family, in the Plymouth Savoy they're still paying off, down the new I-380, to Dr. Kroger's office in Cedar Falls, to watch Clint sit in stony silence, a Rorschach pattern of plasters and bandages across his face, different each time, while Dr. Kroger wheedles and cajoles and bargains and talks at the unhearing patient. The friction always builds up on the drive home, until it thunders into a lightning storm, Harold striking down anyone who dares stand tall, lightning rods on the open, flat prairie.

"Oh, Barney, tell your brother to keep his head down for once," says Edie, tucking in the boys for the night. Clint, facing the wall in the next bed, gives no sign of hearing her. "It breaks my heart to see you boys hurt."

"Yes, mom," says Barney, ten years old and still her sweet baby, at the same time Harold hollers from the bottom of the stairs, "Are you ready yet?"

They don't come this way often, through the sinuous back roads, but the trees are so pretty, red maples and yellow sycamores, and red cedars turning purple with cold, hissing like flames in the wind, back-lit by the setting sun, the backdrop to the last of this year's fireflies putting on one final show. Overhead, a flock of Canadian geese fly south, and Edie presses her hand against the window, separated from their wild, wind-burnt freedom by a thin sheet of safety glass.

"Petition of conferred jurisdiction denied, my left nut. That candy-ass judge think money grow on trees? I gotta work my ass off for Dr. Chrome-dome to cool his heels for two hours and jerk off to Jung. So what if the kid picked a fight or two? Back when we were his age, that was called 'being young and stupid'. Now they got all kinds of fancy talk on symptom-bearing this and homeo-whatsit that. Thrash it out of the kid, I say, the good old-fashioned way, and he won't act up no more."

Edie holds her tongue. Harold always drives fast when he's agitated, pushing the car past what speed his feet can carry him, like he once flew down basketball courts, daring the world to catch up to him. The speedometer slowly creeps to the right.

"And don't think I don't know how you coddle the kid, woman. He won't grow up to be no man if you keep babying him, turn into some bleeding-heart panty-waist--"

The tires squeals as they take the next turn too sharp. Harold curses as the car spins out of control, careening past the asphalt, no guard rails to box them in, and Edie knows, in a second of perfect clarity, as the car skips once, twice, three times, four, down the embankment--Harold missed the brake pedal, his heel uncooperative sometimes under anger, no leverage to turn his foot.

The trees rush up to meet them.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Julia Weldon's [All the Birds](http://www.mediafire.com/listen/8m38w0xg3vln663/Julia_Weldon-All_the_Birds.mp3).
> 
> Frank is based off of Francis Minturn Sedgwick Jr., one of Edie Sedgwick's older brothers, who was the original template for Edith Barton. Frank is the last remnant of that first draft.
> 
> I am not a doctor, and have no idea how Achilles tendons work. Maybe Hal hated his foot braces and never told Edie about the exercises he was supposed to do to stretch out the tendon? idk.
> 
> Also, this turned out to be three times longer than what I was aiming for. Oops.


End file.
